Nick Cunningham

“Lights will be a stylized and playful observational documentary where we follow an eclectic group of men in a remote exotic Norwegian valley famous for its mystical light phenomena,” Norwegian producer Christian Falch (UpNorth Film) tells BDE. “We follow the men in their search for answers to the unexplainable, possibly to find meaning in their own lives...It will NOT be a UFO film, it will be a human film.”

Directed by Marek Šulík, Ms. President is described as “time-lapse portrait of Slovak President Zuzana Čaputová.” The festival programme, extended this year from six to ten days (October 25 – November 3), will offer up new documentaries from across the world, retrospectives, the best of experimental filmmaking and a number of non-competitive programme sections. Industry runs October 29-November 1 2024.

The annual celebration of Nordic doc kicks off September 19 in Malmö (Sweden) with Zara Zerny’s Echo of You, one of 15 films selected for the event’s Best Nordic Documentary competition. Other key features of the packed event include the Nordisk Panorama Forum for new projects. “The strength of the Nordic documentary industry is no accident. It’s the product of a stable support system, good film schools, and a culture of creative producers willing to take risks on emerging talent,” Executive Director Heidi Christensen tells BDE.

Co-produced by ZDF/3sat, the documentary looks at the phenomenon of light from both scientific and artistic perspectives. “Thomas Riedelsheimer’s documentaries are a delightful celebration of light and sound,” says festival director Christoph Terhechte. “They sharpen our senses. Twenty years after opening our festival with ‘Touch the Sound’, we’re proud to be doing it again with Tracing Light.”

Organisers announced 18 September the documentary programme of the tenth (Mercato Internazionale Audiovisivo) which runs October 14-18 in Rome. The MIA market was launched in 2015, organized by ANICA (Associazione Nazionale Industrie Cinematografiche Audiovisive e Digitali) and APA (Associazione Produttori Audiovisivi).

The award for the best film (AJB DOC Main Award) went to Smiling Georgia by Luka Beradze, about the “false promises politicians make to retain power“ (in this case the promise of dentures). The Al Jazeera Balkans Program Jury Award went to José Carlos Soares, Tanju Şahin and Aslıhan Eker Çakmak for their film Holy Redemption, which “uncovers Israel's strategies to systematically steal or 'seize' private Palestinian land and displace Palestinians."

In 2021, Georgian Soso, a perennial optimist, decided that his and his family’s future would lie in blueberry farming. So together with wife Nino and their two boys Giorgio and Lazare, he set off on this new adventure with single-minded determination. “The love was surprising,” director Mikaberidze explains what moved her most while making the film. “The love between the parents, the love toward their kids, the love of their land and their animals. It was beautiful. This is what I wanted to show, love.”

DOK Leipzig will undergo a process of self-reflection in 2024 as it examines its own methods of selection during the GDR years. Titled “Third Ways in a Divided World. Utopia and Subversion” the retrospective will “feature a compilation of films that reflect various aspirations of autonomy or view communist and socialist doctrine through a different lens. In this vein, the retrospective also brings up DOK Leipzig’s own history as a festival,” organisers write.

Jazz and decolonization are inextricably linked in Johan Grimonprez’s masterful study of Congo’s independence from Belgium in 1960, the rise of pan-Africanism, the inevitable neo-colonial backlash, and the murder/assassination of Congo’s newly elected PM Patrice Lumumba in February 1961. And about the CIA’s use of jazz legends as a smokescreen for covert operations far beyond US. “History writing is always about re-writing,” Grimonprez tells BDE. “It's trying to look at what's not been written, at what's fallen between the cracks.”

The prizes were handed out September 16 at AJD Industry after three days of frenetic pitch activity and during which 29 projects were presented across four categories (Main Pitch, Rough Cut, Balkan Stars, and Special Selection). The projects competed for co-production and cash awards worth more than 120,000 EUR provided by Al Jazeera Documentary, Al Jazeera Balkans, and other partners.